There are many aspects to the collective decision-making of the mullahs in Tehran. On the one hand, they support opening up negotiations on a nuclear deal to help unlock the bank vaults to billions in frozen assets. Then on the other hand, they denounce the terms of the deal and claim it doesn’t apply to them unless all sanctions are lifted at once.

The same double standard applies to what is happening in Syria. The Iran regime has fought endlessly to keep Assad in power there to the extent it even begged the Russians for military support to save him from being overthrown as rebels made serious inroads. The mullahs sought to legitimize the idea of Assad staying in power and seemed to reach a breakthrough by finally being invited to multilateral talks on finding a political solution to the crisis.

But now the regime has threatened to walk away from talks if it found them unconstructive, specifically citing Saudi Arabia’s role in the talks as the bitter rivals escalate their growing conflicts that now stretch from Yemen to Syria.

“In the first round of talks, some countries, especially Saudi Arabia, played a negative and unconstructive role … Iran will not participate if the talks are not fruitful,” regime media cited deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying.

Delivering unusually personal criticism, regime president Hassan Rouhani appeared to reprimand Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who, on Saturday, lashed out at Tehran for what he termed its interference in regional countries.

“An inexperienced young man in a regional country will not reach anywhere by rudeness in front of elders,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Monday. He did not name the ‘young man’ but Jubeir was assumed to be his target according to Reuters.

It’s this kind of “I’ll take my ball and play elsewhere” response that has come to typify Iranian regime’s reactions in foreign affairs now. It pushed for a nuclear agreement and then complained about it and threatened to walk away. It pushed for a role for Assad and a seat at the table and now that it has it, it threatens to walk away.

While some psychologists might label this bipolar behavior, long-time regime watchers within the Iranian dissident community have long warned this was how the mullahs do business by pushing a false façade and then changing the rules at the last minute.

It was behavior that typified nearly two years of nuclear talks in which Iran refused to commit to the fine print in order to avoid being boxed in; resulting in a 159-page agreement that is dwarfed by the thousands of pages in similar nuclear agreements with the old Soviet Union and North Korea.

That split behavior has been most explicit in Ali Khamenei, the regime’s top mullah, who has persistently and publicly undercut Rouhani following the nuclear agreement in order to demonstrate his firm control over regime matters and relegate Rouhani to the figurehead status many have claimed he remains.

According to Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, head of the International American Council, writing in Huffington Post, Khamenei has ruled out any “snap-back” option with regards to the sanctions.

“First, he wants sanctions to be lifted at the outset, then he wants to make sure that the international community will not have any mechanism through which it can re-impose sanctions in the very likely scenario that Iran decides to pull out of the nuclear agreement and go full speed ahead on uranium enrichment,” he writes.

“But wait, that’s not all, there is another condition to be met as well. After Khamenei had his president and nuclear team add the condition of the removal of an arms embargo to the nuclear agreement in the eleventh hour, he is now adding the removal of all sanctions (including the ones linked to Iran’s terrorism and human rights violations) to the already-done nuclear deal,” he added.

“Iran also has arrested Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese information-technology specialist who lives in Washington and has permanent-resident status in the U.S. At the same time, Iranian businessmen with ties to foreign firms are being harassed by Iran’s state-security apparatus,” Seib writes. “These detentions are likely the work of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who function as a kind of parallel government operating alongside—and apparently beyond the influence of—the official government of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, with whom the U.S. and other world powers negotiated the nuclear deal.”

The broad range of actions by the regime over the last few months leaves very little doubt about the intentions of the mullahs and Khamenei in particular.

He is not interested in accommodation. He has no time for negotiations. He has no belief in moderation.

The regime has even stepped up arrests domestically, including two journalists, one a former deputy culture minister who was jailed in the 2009 crackdown that followed the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The son of ex-official Issa Saharkhiz told news media his father was arrested this week at his residence in Tehran on charges that include “insulting the supreme leader” and “propaganda against the regime.” The arrests are likely to have a chilling effect on journalists and activists ahead of major elections early next year in Iran.

Meanwhile, a relative of Ehsan Mazandarani, editor in chief of the Iranian regime’s daily Farhikhtegan, said that Mazandarani was detained the same day, also in the capital by agents of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Even as these crackdowns increase – and in spite of criticism from human rights and dissident groups – in a vote held Monday, regime lawmakers opted overwhelmingly to continue pushing the “Death to America” slogan chanted across the country on Fridays, after regime ally’s Friday prayer services, and with special zeal every November 4th – the day Iranian mullahs commemorates the beginning of the 1977 siege on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Khamenei picks and chooses his fights and he clearly intends on fighting any notion of moderation.

Trita Parsi traveled with Siamak Namazi to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, in August 2000. They also toured the Zoroastrian “Fire of Victory” Temple in Yazd.At the time, Siamak was living in Tehran, working for Atieh Bahar, a consultant company with close ties to the government.In 1999, Parsi and Siamak co-authored a paper that recommended setting up a lobbying organization in Washington to influence US-Iran policy. Siamak took a sabbatical in 2005 to complete a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. While at the Center, Siamak helped Parsi formulate NIAC policies supportive of the Iranian regime.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen, has been credited with helping found the Iran lobby including the creation of the National Iranian American Council alongside Trita Parsi as the primary vehicle for advocating for a nuclear agreement lifting economic sanctions on the regime.

The Daily Beast chronicled his family’s involvement as an “intellectual architect” for the NIAC as a pathway for empowering those within the regime whom he had a close relationship with and believed by helping secure an agreement it would boost his fortunes within the regime.

In the immortal words of Kevin Spacey who plays the scheming Frank Underwood on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” “We’re all victims of our own hubris at times.”

Truer words were never spoken about the Iran lobby because on the verge of reaping their perceived successes, they discover all they really are, are puppets for a regime of mullahs whose intent is only focused on preserving their own power.

That is because according to regime media reports, while visiting family in Tehran, Namazi was arrested by Revolutionary Guards Corp soldiers and tossed into the notorious Evin Prison.

There is an irony here on par with Alfred Nobel inventing dynamite and then creating the Nobel Peace Prize after his invention was used in war.

Namazi joins four other Americans who are being held hostage by the regime, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and the former FBI agent Robert Levinson.

According to a piece in American Thinker, Parsi and Namazi founded NIAC as a way to lobby for the removal of sanctions against the regime and promote its foreign policy while combatting anti-regime forces in the U.S.

Both Parsi and Namazi reportedly enjoyed close ties and access to Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif, the regime’s president and foreign minister, with Parsi being seen traveling with and in close discussions with the regime delegation during nuclear talks.

Conspicuously, the NIAC have been silent on the issue, declining comment and social media feeds for Parsi and other NIAC staff is devoid of any mention of the arrest.

But Hassan Dai, editor of the Iranian American Forum who won a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Parsi, speculated that the arrest suggests a power struggle of sorts within the regime’s leadership.

Dai explained in an interview with Breitbart News that Namazi had consistently “lobbied in favor of a faction of the regime,” which upset the mullahs because it would only be acceptable to “lobby for the whole regime.”

The fight between the factions in Iran is a fight for “the best solution to preserve the regime,” he explained, adding that groups like NIAC have never sided with true “reformists,” but with people who wish to employ a different strategy to empower the regime, such as Rouhani and former President Akbar Rafsanjani.

Because Namazi and NIAC prefer one faction over the other, “they are undermining the Supreme Leader. They are undermining the Revolutionary Guard,” Dai explained. “When you lobby U.S. policymakers to remove sanctions against Iran with the rationale that it will help reform the regime, you undermine the Supreme Leader, because he wants them to accommodate to the regime now.”

The arrest of Namazi sends a message from Iran’s rulers that “Rouhani has no power,” Dai concluded. “He cannot even protect his own friend.”

Breitbart News further speculates – and rightly so – that the arrest pours cold water on the notion that securing the nuclear deal would empower “moderates” within the regime and help reform it. Evidence since agreeing to the nuclear contradicts that idea completely with the conviction of Rezaian, the test launch of an illegal ballistic missile and the launching of a new offensive in Syria alongside Russian forces.

The arrest of Namazi demonstrates that the leadership of the Iran regime is of one mind and firmly in the control of Ali Khamenei and his religious cohorts and that any idea of moderation within the regime is a pipe dream; which may go to explain why coming off of the NIAC’s recent leadership conference to celebrate the nuclear deal, Parsi’s Twitter feed was filled with posts condemning Saudi Arabia, a bitter enemy of Iran and locked in fighting in Yemen.

If Parsi doesn’t tow the mullahs’ line, he might find a different kind of reception party the next time he travels to Tehran and end up sitting next to his buddy Namazi.

News media and journalists around the world have reacted strongly to the announcement that Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian had been convicted in an espionage trial after 14 months of imprisonment. The verdict from the Revolutionary Court was reported through regime state television, but not the specific decision even though the trial ended in August.

According to the Washington Post, “Rezaian faced four charges — the most serious of which was espionage — and it was not immediately clear whether he was convicted of all charges. Rezaian and The Post have strongly denied the accusations, and his case has drawn wide-ranging denunciations including statements from the White House and media freedom groups.”

Depending on which charges he was convicted on, Rezaian could face upwards of 20 more years in prison.

“Iran has behaved unconscionably throughout this case, but never more so than with this indefensible decision by a Revolutionary Court to convict an innocent journalist of serious crimes after a proceeding that unfolded in secret, with no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing,” said Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post, in a statement.

“The contemptible end to this ‘judicial process’ leaves Iran’s senior leaders with an obligation to right this grievous wrong,” Baron said. “Jason is a victim — arrested without cause, held for months in isolation, without access to a lawyer, subjected to physical mistreatment and psychological abuse, and now convicted without basis. He has spent nearly 15 months locked up in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, more than three times as long than any other Western journalists.”

Ironically, on October 10, Rezaian passed the dubious milestone of having been locked up in Iran longer than the original 52 American embassy hostages three decades ago.

Rezaian’s case, as well as the plight of other Americans being held in Iranian regime’s prisons; including Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, and Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor, are defining signposts of how the Iran regime’s leadership acts, plans, thinks and executes its national policy. They have become unfortunate pawns in a much larger game the mullahs have been playing at for the past three decades.

Abedini of Boise, Idaho, was imprisoned for organizing home churches. Hekmati of Flint, Mich., has spent four years in prison since his arrest during a visit to see his grandmother. Rezaian was accused by the regime of providing information on Iranian companies and individuals violating economic sanctions and thereby providing intelligence to regime foes.

These higher profile victims share a similar fate as countless thousands of other Iranians who have been arrested, tortured, falsely imprisoned and often publicly executed as the regime seeks to stamp out dissent, curb free speech and hang onto people to be used as bargaining chips should it need them.

In the case of the Americans, Hassan Rouhani, the regime’s handpicked leader, openly floated the idea of prisoner swaps with the Americans exchanged for up to 19 Iranian agents convicted of trafficking in arms and smuggling nuclear components for the regime’s nuclear program.

In many ways though, approval the nuclear agreement may have inadvertently sunk hopes of getting these Americans released since the mullahs perceive they got what they originally wanted in the potential lifting of economic sanctions, which raises the question of why would the regime double down and sentence Rezaian when there would be no clear political reason to?

The conviction certainly disproves the idea – long floated by Iran lobbyists such as the National Iranian American Council – that supporting the nuclear deal would empower so-called “moderates” within the Iranian government. If anything, this conviction demonstrates that Ali Khamenei, to whom the courts answer to, is still firmly in charge of the regime’s policies.

What all of this tells us is that the Iran regime leadership does not value human life, other than to use it as a commodity. It tells us the judicial system is controlled and used for political and religious purposes. It tells us there is always linkage in the mullahs’ mindset and willingness to traffic in human life.

The regime shows us every day examples that it views international law and norms with contempt, be it the brutal treatment of its people or the almost daily threats its generals and leaders make against the U.S. and other nations and neighbors.

Alireza Tangsiri, a Revolutionary Guard Corps lieutenant commander, said that suicide bombers are on stand by and ready to “blow up themselves” to “destroy the U.S. warships,” according to remarks made Monday in Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“They [the U.S.] have tested us once and if necessary, there are people who will blow up themselves with ammunitions to destroy the U.S. warships,” Tangsiri was quoted as saying.

He added that if the United States takes any hostile action against Iran, the country’s military forces would pursue the Americans into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I declare now that if the enemy wants to spark a war against Iran, we will chase them even to the Gulf of Mexico and we will (certainly) do it,” he said.

The threats come a day after Iran test fired ballistic missiles in the region, in a potential violation of international agreements barring such activity.

That missile, the Emad or “Pillar,” is designed to evade missile defenses and is supposedly much more accurate than previous missile designs, putting neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and even Southern Europe within range.

While execution of Iranians under Rouhani’s watch is surging, it is more obvious now that despite the Iran Lobby’s pitch, mullahs ruling Iran, emboldened by the concessions received as a result of the flawed Iran deal, are now more of a threat to the international community than ever before.

In a story in TIME magazine, the Iran regime ruled with an iron fist by the orthodox and radicalized mullahs since the Islamic revolution in 1979 is running head-on into the most stubborn of obstacles to their rule: the young people of Iran.

Just as the passing of the Baby Boom generation into senior citizen status in the U.S. has wrought significant and deep policy debates and demographic changes affecting the economy, culture and even technology, the Iran regime is now struggling with a population in which a whopping 60 percent of Iranians are under the age of 35 with no real tangible connection to the religious revolution that took over the country.

For this new generation of Iranians, their interests lie not in rigid religious ideology or foreign intervention in proxy wars, but rather in the more mundane goals of finding a meaningful career, saving up for a car or new washer and dryer made by Samsung or buying a iPhone 6 from Apple.

For Iran’s young people, the pathway to a better life is increasingly not going through the hands of their mullah masters, but rather through their own desires, hopes, dreams and aspirations.

It is a remarkable time for the Islamic state as it gains newfound economic windfalls resulting from the recently completed nuclear deal and these same, restless young Iranians eagerly look forward to the distribution of this new wealth to improve their lot in life which has grown stunted, moribund and depressing under the harsh rule of the mullahs.

Even though Iran’s population, high degree of education among its people and skilled labor force makes it an ideal economic engine for growth, the mullahs have wasted this prize in favor of cronyism, corruption and gross nepotism that has cut a deep schism through Iranian society between haves and have-nots with families and relatives of the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards being the recipients of the nation’s wealth.

Iranian dissident groups and leaders such as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran have long pointed out that the economic and social disparities fostered by the mullahs are laying the seeds for their eventual ouster since Iran’s own history shows that the start of the 1979 revolution came not from religious fervor, but deep-seated resentment over the state of the economy under the Shah.

The corruption of the current regime runs deep within Iranian society and has caused significant unrest in the form of demonstrations and protests from young people, teachers and small business owners, which are often brutally put down by the regime’s paramilitary Basij militias who often inflict beatings on the street.

In another sign of the oppression from the mullahs, Al-Monitor reported on a move by the regime’s Ministry of Education to set a strict quota in the number of new jobs made available to Iranian women.

“The Ministry of Education held its nationwide exam for new job applicants on Sept. 18, with 178,000 people participating. The exact date for the announcement of the results is unclear. But what is clear is that no matter what score female applicants may obtain, they will make up only 10% of those who will be employed,” Al-Monitor reported.

“This disappointing development came to light in the registration guidelines for this year’s exam. Of the 3,703 educational posts up for grabs, it is stated that only 630 will go to women while the other 3,073 posts will go to men. Female applicants in the Iranian capital are perhaps the most exposed to this policy; of the 190 new employees that are to join the Ministry of Education in Tehran, only six are set to be women,” the story added.

The elevation of Hassan Rouhani as the handpicked president for the regime came with much fanfare over new regime policies towards gender equality and the vast gulf in educational and professional opportunities for Iran’s women. The evidence over the past two years that while Rouhani tries to project a more friendly and moderate image to the rest of the world, at home, the plight of Iran’s women has only gotten worse.

Against this backdrop, Rouhani prepares to come to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly as part of his annual PR push and with it comes a rising chorus of protest over the policies he and his master, Ali Khamenei, have pushed over the past two years.

Ken Blackwell, a contributing editor to Townhall.com and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and the American Civil Rights Union and a board member of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, wrote an editorial urging that the UN welcome mat be pulled out from under Rouhani because of the regime’s horrendous human rights record.

“According to Amnesty International and other respected human rights organizations, the human rights situation in Iran is fast deteriorating under Rouhani. There have been some 2,000 executions in Iran in the two years that Rouhani has been in office, more than in any similar period in the past 25 years. Iran holds the record of having the most executions per capita in the world, and is the biggest executioner of juvenile offenders,” Blackwell said.

“So do not throw down the welcome mat for Hassan Rouhani in New York when he still represents a regime that sponsors terrorism and ruthlessly suppresses its population. Ignoring ongoing human rights violations in Iran as well as the growth of terrorism and meddling in the region will only embolden the regime and allow it to continue brutal crackdowns and escalating violence,” Blackwell added.

To that end, a broad coalition of Iranian-American groups will hold a “Voices of Iran” rally in front of the UN on September 28th to protest Rouhani’s appearance and denounce the deteriorating state of human rights in Iran.

Speakers at the rally are to include Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the UN and U.S. Energy Secretary; Tom Ridge, former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary and Governor of Pennsylvania; and Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor.

We can only hope that the world will give these Iranian-Americans the benefit of the coverage they deserve.

During the third round of ongoing talks between the P5+1 and the Iran regime, there has been much discussion about centrifuges, enriched uranium stockpiles and reactor designs, but there has been scant discussion about the most pressing problem and that is the pitiful state of human rights within Iran and in areas of Iranian influence.

Reagan’s famous remarks about the Evil Empire could today be paraphrased to say: “The Iran regime is an Evil Empire, and the extremist Islam is the focus of evil in the modern world.”

The regime’s dismal human rights record is beyond dispute from official sources such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, who has now issued several blistering reports condemning mass arrests, torture and killings by the Iran regime.

Non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International have similarly condemned the Iran regime for the large increase in public executions, arrests and imprisonment without trial or charge for political dissidents, religious minorities, foreign citizens and ordinary Iranians for innocuous acts such as posting mash up videos on the Internet.

The sharp increases of brutality under the tenure of president Hassan Rouhani has coincided with ongoing nuclear talks, as well as the launching of several proxy wars by Iran’s military and intelligence services under the mandate of Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, including the sectarian civil war in Syria, the rise of warring terror groups in Iraq and the overthrow of the Yemen government, all with backing and coordination from Iran.

There has also been some questions and criticism being raised in the U.S. and amongst other nations negotiating with the regime that the lack of focus and inclusion of human rights is a serious mistake and may let Iran’s mullahs “off the hook” so to speak and allow them to gain significant relief from economic sanctions without having to make any changes in their foreign or domestic policy.

At the core of any successful nuclear deal must be the confidence that Iran will abide by it. An improved human rights record would provide the evidence necessary that regime change was possible moving forward. Without it, how can any signatory nation truly believe that Iran mullah’s signature was worth the paper it was affixed to?

Not holding Iran’s mullahs accountable for human rights violations and tying a comprehensive nuclear accord to a nuclear agreement would be devastating for the thousands being held captive not only in Iran, but in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as all those suffering under extremist groups radicalized by Iran’s mullahs in places such as Libya, Egypt, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story the other day saying the Iranian regime had announced the installation of conservative mullah Mohammad Yazdi as the new chairman to the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses and supervises the regime’s Supreme Leader, a post currently held by Ali Khamenei, who – if news reports are to be believed – is in poor declining health.

While the news, in and of itself, might not be too surprising, it does illustrate a key point about the nature of the Iranian regime that has a direct bearing on current nuclear talks between the Islamic state and the P5+1 group of nations and that is no matter what the public perception might be about a more “moderate” face to Iran, the nation is still firmly and unquestionably in the control of the religious conservatives.

The timing of the move is also interesting considering other moves the regime has taken in the past few weeks to reinforce the perception that it will remain a bastion of Islamic extremists and is not interested in moderating its policies just to gain a deal.

These include regular public denunciations of America as the “Great Satan” and the blowing up of a mock U.S. aircraft carrier in military exercises. The regime has also stepped up its tactical command and control of Iraqi military forces and Shiite militias in the fight with ISIS as it bulks up its ability to extend military power by the commissioning of a new home-made naval warship.

The decision to appoint Yazdi is a crucial one since Khamenei’s death would require a selection of a successor and he is the natural choice given his elevation within the mullahs hierarchy. Yazdi also is a member of the mullah’s Guardian Council and former regime Chief Justice, with lots of blood on his hand.

He has regularly espoused conservative views over the years according to the Journal story, including a quote in 2013 “when he told the Mehr news agency that it wasn’t appropriate for women to run as presidential candidates.”

Why his election is significant, because it illustrates a key conundrum Obama administration officials have been reluctant to talk about which is there are no divisions between “moderates” and “conservatives” in a religious theocracy where the wishes of a small cadre of ruling mullahs carry the power of law.

This narrative of moderates vs. hardliners in Iran is largely a fabrication of the news media controlled by the Iranian regime in order to present to the world the perception there is a battle of wills and ideas and that by acting in a certain way, the forces of moderation will be supported.

In contract talks for free agent professional athletes, we call that “negotiating against oneself.”

Which are exactly what the West and the U.S. in particular has been doing the past three years. There is a perception in the Western media that Hassan Rouhani is some kind of soft, lovable teddy bear of a moderate who is only interested in holding back the dread forces of darkness and medieval thinking in his own country. It’s a perception bolstered by the non-stop lobbying and branding efforts of the regime’s U.S.-based supporters including the National Iranian American Council.

The truth of the matter is that Rouhani is in lock step with his hardline brethren since his days running the regime’s National Security Council and a past negotiator on previous nuclear talks that also collapsed and failed. The fact that during his tenure of president, Iran has stepped up executions to over 1,200 according to Amnesty International and instituted broad crackdowns on internet access, news media, social media and minority religious freedoms leaves little doubt Iran has veered even more conservative since his election.

In fact, in 1999 after student protests, Rouhani was said in a speech at a pro-government rally during his tenure at the National Security Council:

“At dusk yesterday we received a decisive revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these opportunist elements wherever it may occur. From today our people shall witness how in the arena our law enforcement force . . . shall deal with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their faces.”

This is not a man of moderation, but a man that can work well with either Khamenei or Yazdi.